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Friday, September 08, 2006

Talking of the dumbing down of television...

It was recently announced that sometime footballer, failed memory man and fulltime idiot, Rio Ferdinand, is planning a follow up to his ‘World Cup Wind-Ups’ show. He’s planning to target his footballing friends and WAGS for a new kind of make over show. With several designers at his disposal, he’s going to transform their mansions in ways never seen before. Noting that millionaire footballers have more money than taste and every gadget possible, he’s going to great lengths to do ‘something special’.

Can you imagine anything more obscene? Footballers getting to show off their vast wealth while at the same time getting a free redesign and plenty of new gadgets. The only thing more distasteful than this was hearing of multi-millionaire pig bladder kicker, Frank Lampard, looking enviously at the yacht and surrounding wealth of billionaire Roman Abramovic and feeling a little bit sorry for himself.

The only saving grace is hoping that Rio’s taste for bling results in some truly awful décor, a massive fall in the value of the property and some very pissed off celebrities. And you can imagine my dread when I hear that Rio’s production company also have a reality TV show in development.

It’s just a shame that the press release didn’t read like this:

Rio’s Dole Scum Wind-Ups

Fresh on the heals of his groundbreaking show ‘World Cup Wind-Ups’, which was entirely his own idea and not some poor rip off of Candid Camera, Beadle’s About, Noel’s Gotcha’s or Punk'd, where millions of idiots tuned in purely because it featured his friends who also happen to play football for England, where he got to play some hilarious pranks such as convincing Wayne Rooney that he’d killed a dog and featured the hilarious footage of David Beckham risking injury as he escaped a moving car, Rio Ferdinand brings us his next TV brainchild, ‘Dole Scum Wind-Ups’.

Laugh along with Rio as he takes top Premiership players, convinced that their careers have prematurely ended, that they’ve lost every last penny and asset and that they’ve been deserted by loved ones and hangers on, and places them in a run down council flat. Watch the hilarity ensue as they go through the soul destroying and demeaning process of signing on for the pittance of £50 a week. Enjoy their exploits as you see them rejected for job after job, wishing that they’d actually bothered to get some qualifications rather than kicking a ball and dying just a little more with every single knock back.

Share Rio’s joy as we see them forced into mugging, stealing car stereos and selling their arses to 18 stone lorry drivers in an attempt to afford the very basics needed to survive. Guffaw at their decline into drug use as they try and find something to escape the relentless monotony of their wretched existence, trying to find something to help them transcend the utter, utter emptiness of a life with no hope, where watching those even worse off than you on the Jeremy Kyle show is the only respite.

Chuckle as these spoilt, pampered, overpaid idiots, who couldn’t even wipe their own arses without an adviser and agent present realise the truly privileged position they once were in, realise how lucky they were to earn more than most earn in a year each week purely for being able to kick a round object really, really well fall into deeper and deeper depression, wracked with the guilt of seeing how normal people have to survive and seeing just how obscene their displays of wealth were.

You’ll howl with laughter as one footballer, unable to cope with his bleak, dark, futile existence, a life with no dreams, where every single day is a battle to survive, finally reaches breaking point and in a bid to end the pain and despair opens up his wrists. You’ll be rolling on the floor as the ambulance crew battle to save his pointless life and Rio rushes in shouting ‘You’ve been merked!’

An Endemol production.

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